Just think about word usage and the thought came to mind that pronounciation and spelling are important here, for instance:

"There's only 20 bullets in this box, Joe."
"Well, air's lesson that in the one I got."

When I was a kid, back in the dark ages of human history, there were soft cover books that sold at Interstate convenience stores like Stuckie's (anyone remember Stuckie's?) that had a photo of a man on the cover. He wore a cowboy hat and had the most elastic face. The books were called something like "Southern Dictionary" or "Texan Dictionary" and there were all these words like "faints" - the barricade around your yard usually made of chain link or pickets. That was 40 yrs ago and I bet the words would still be in usage as pronounced and still be just as funny.

Brazilian dude wrote:So, what do you think of the dichotomy between fewer and less?

Seems to me Anheuser-Busch did the greatest national disservice on this misusage with their original Miller Lite commercials ("one-third less calories than their regular beer") <cringe>.

I remember Stuckey's (Stuckey'ses?) well from our regular family trips between PA and Mississippi (and of course who could forget the Burma Shave signs?). I think there's a Stuckey or two still stuck out there, but stacked far fewer, they seem to stick out less.

The books Annie mentions bring to mind similar ones disseminated in central PA about Amish expressions, Germanisms like "Amos stung his toe with a bee".

Here is the rule as it is usually encountered: fewer refers to number among things that are counted, and less refers to quantities or amount among things that are measured. This rule is simple enough and easy enough to follow. It has only one fault - it is not accurate for all usage. If we were to write the rule from the observatoin of actual usage, it would be the same for fewer: fewer does refer to number among things that are counted. However, it would be different for less: less refers to quantity or amount among things that are measured and to number among things that are counted. Our amended rule describes the actual usage of the past thousand years or so.

As far as we have been able to discover, the received rule originated in 1770 as a comment on less:

This Word is most commonly used in spaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No Fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but more strictly proper - Baker 1770

Baker's remarks about fewer express clearly and modestly - "I should think," "appears to me" - his own taste and preference. It is instructive to compare Baker with one of the most recent college handbooks in our collection:

Fewer refers to quantities that can be counted individually... Less is used for collective quantities that are not counted individually... and for abstract characteristics. - Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988

Notice how Baker's preference has here been generalized and elevated to an absolute status, and his notice of contrary usage has been omitted. This approach is quite common in handbooks and schoolbooks; many pedagogues seem reluctant to share the often complicated facts about English with their students.

How Baker's opinion came to be an inviolable rule, we do not know. But we do know that many people believe it is such. Simon 1980, for instance, calls the "less than 50,000 words" he found in a book about Joseph Conrad a "whopping" error.

The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great - he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin - more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language. After about 900 years Robert Baker opined that fewer might be more elegant and proper. Almost every usage writer since Baker has followed Baker's lead, and generations of English teachers have swelled the chorus. The result seems to be a fairly large number of people who now believe less used of countables to be wrong, though its standardness is easily demonstrated.

In present-day written usage, less is as likley as or more likely than fewer to appear in a few common constructions. One of the most frequent is the less than construction where less is a pronoun. The countables in this construction are often distances, sums of money, units of time, and statistical enumerations, which are often thought of as amounts rahter than numbers. Some examples:

... he had somewhat less than a million to his name when he went to Washington - David Hablestam, Harper's, February 1971

I was never in Europe for less than fourteen months at a time - James Thurber, letter, 18 July 1952

Her agency, less than 5 years old, is a smashing success - Donald Robinson, Ladies' Home Jour., January 1971

... an allied people, today less than 50,000 in number - W.B. Lockwood, A Panorama of Indo-European Languages, 1972

"... I've known you less than twenty-four hours..." - Agatha Christie, Who Didn't They Ask Evans?, 1934

Fewer can be used in the same constructions, but it appears less often than less. It is sometimes used in such a way as to make one suspect that an editor rather than a writer is responsible for the fewer:

... has never gained fewer than 1,222 yards in a season - Rick Telander, Sports Illustrated, 5 September, 1984

Some contemporary usage writers concede that this use of less is acceptable.

The [/i]no less than[/i] construction noticed by Baker tends still to have less more often than fewer:

The class of 1974... included no less than 71 new Democrats - Tip O'Neil with William Novak,Man of the House, 1987

It is spoken by no less than 100 million in Bengal and bordering areas - W.B. Lockwood, A Panorama of Indo-European Languages, 1972

Less is the usual choice in the "twenty-five words or less" construction:

... readers are encouraged to keep their comments to 500 words or less - Cjamge, January-February 1971

... of all the millions of families in the country, two out of three consist of only three persons or less - Mark Abrams, London Calling, 9 Oct. 1952

... and now know enough to create little fictions that in 30 seconds or less get right to the heart of desire iself - Mark Crispin Miller, John Hopkins Mag., Winter 1984

Kilpatrick 1984 defends this less and the one just above. Less is also frequent when it follows a number:

... at thirty-three on my part, and few years less on yours - Lord Byron, letter, 17 Nov. 1821

And of course it follows one:

... one less scholarship - Les A. Schneider, letter to the editor, Change, September 1971

One less reporter - Don Cook, Saturday Rev., 24 Jne 1978

Less is also frequently used to modify ordinary plural count nouns. In present-day English this usage appears to be more common in speech (and reported speech) than it is in discursive writing. It is likely that some of the plural nouns in the examples were thought of as uncountable amounts rather than numbers.

... Goldsmith took less pains than Pope... to create images of luxury in the reader's mind - John Butt, English literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979

... Americans pay less taxes than most of the inhabitants of developed countries 0 Robert Leckachman, quoted in Center Mag., January-February 1970

The less sodium you consume, the less drugs you're likely to need -0 Jane E. Brody, N.Y. Times, 4 May 1980

You have to make less mistakes - Victor Temkin, quoted in N.Y. Times, 4 May 1980

Less people exercise their right to vote - William Scranton, quoted in Celebrity, October 1976

Uses such as the above, even those where fewer might have been more elegant, have been standard for more than a millennium. If you are a native speaker, your use of less and fewer can reliably be guided by your ear. If you are not a native speaker, you will find that the simple rule with which we started is a safe guide, except for the constructions for which we have shown less to be preferred.

Can't I just scan it here the next time? Can anybody help me? Tim?
From Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage

Oh, I thought this thread was about using the word worsh for wash. I grew up in Memphis, TN, and my neighbors across the street always used to say, "Worsh your hands, and wrench 'em off." I don't know why, nobody else I knew ever said that. We always used to laugh about that. Especially when someone would say, "Go wash your face off", and my mother would say, "Don't wash it OFF, just WASH it!" LOL

I say warsh all the time and I'm from SC and i don't know why I say it so bad 'cause I'm the only one that i know around here that really says it every time some say it every once in a while but...I have a very heavy southern accent and drag in my voice and am very proud of it. I scored 100% Dixie on the test.

G.R.I.T.S.

P.S. if you don't know what grits means lol you r purdy bad off when it comes to southern dialect. Girls raised in The South!!!!!

I'm a globetrotter due to my father being in the military. The Yankee-Rebel test sometimes didn't make sense to me. Nevertheless, I do have some experience with accents from around the US.

I claim Washington State as my home. And no...you never say Warshington there...unless you're kidding. Warsh was actually a common word to me growing up...my father is from West Virginia. I spent a few years there in my early 20s and it became more noticable to me. I believe that it is an Appalachian (or Appalachy) pronounciation. Don't think that you've ever heard a West Virginian accent? Jodie Foster did a good one in 'Silence of the Lambs.'

Helixgrl

PS/ Currently I live in South Carolina. Maybe by 40 I'll have an accent all my own. I should throw some UK accents in there as well!

I posted earlier that I grew up in Iowa (in the land of little Germany, as my husband calls it) and generations have pronounced it "worsh".

When we were visiting my parents last summer, we went with my dad out into the fields and he was pointing out water damage from rains they had had, talking about how you could see it had "worshed" out part of the terrace. My daughter (6 at the time) perked up and said, "Mommy! Where is the horse?" I laughed and laughed because she wasn't acclimated to Grandpa's Iowa accent.

I do know, from living in Kansas City, there are natives of Missouri who also say "worsh", but then they pronounce the name of their state as "Missourah" rather than "Missouri" but you can't seem to break them of either habit!

I have also lived in the Tampa Bay area and in the Dallas area, and *except* for natives of Florida and for natives of Texas (outside of metropolitan areas), you never hear "worsh". But, when I do, it is usually always a clue, along with the rest of their accent, that they are a native.

In my state Louisiana, most people pronounce it Loose-ee-ana (dragging out the oo, of course) or sometimes Lou-ce-ana, but rarely Lou-ee-ce-ana. I pronounce it correctly. My husband and I always argue over this point. I'm glad to know there are others who have noticed the differences.

I have relatives, in this case, kin-folks, down in Looz ee ana, and since they live there and pronounce it Looz ee ana, I always have assumed that that IS the correct pronunciation, and that everyone who says Loo ee zee ana is wrong. After all, they live there. They should know how to pronounce their state!

In school here in Louisiana, they teach us lou ee zee ana because it's a combination of King Louis (Lou ee) and his Queen Ann of France. I always thought that was the "right" way because it's what I was taught. But then I'm from a family in North Louisiana in a very small area called Hebert.....to the natives pronounced Hee bert. All the rest of LA say A bear. I have defended it as long as I can remember since I am a native. I think I may have to agree that since most Louisiana natives say Looz ee ana, they must be right. I won't tell my husband though. Then I would never hear the end of it.